Sign Language & Linguistics - Volume 16, Issue 1, 2013

In this article, we analyse the role of the head in content questions and polar questions in Turkish Sign Language (Türk İşaret Dili — TİD). We claim that the head not only robustly marks the difference between these two types, but in addition marks an utterance as having interrogative mood. We show that the two functions, the overarching category interrogative mood and the subtypes of interrogatives, have separate phonological exponents, both of which are expressed simultaneously by a single articulator, the head.

Little is known about when and how children acquire plurality for directional verbs in ASL and other signed languages. This paper reports on an experimental study of 11 deaf native-signing children’s acquisition of ‘plural verb agreement’ or plural forms of directional verbs in American Sign Language. Eleven native-signing deaf adults were also tested. An elicitation task explored how children (aged 3;4 to 5;11) and adults marked directional verbs for plurality. The children also participated in an imitation task. Adults marked directional verbs for plurality significantly more often than children. However, adults also omitted plurality from directional verbs, utilizing alternative strategies to mark plural referents significantly more often than did children. Children across all ages omitted plurality, suggesting that the omission is attributable to both the conceptual complexity of plural markers and the optionality of number-marking. Directionality may not be best analyzed as a morphosyntactic phenomenon analogous to verb agreement morphology in spoken languages.

Sign languages have only been acknowledged as true languages in the second half of the 20th century. Studies on their ontogenesis are recent and include mostly comparative approaches to spoken language and sign language acquisition. Studies on sign language acquisition show that of the manual phonological parameters, handshape is the one which is acquired last. This study reports the findings of a first pilot study on Portuguese Sign Language (Língua Gestual Portuguesa — LGP) acquisition, focusing on a Deaf child from 10 months until 24 months of age, and it confirms the pattern previously described for other sign languages. We discuss possible reasons why handshape is harder to acquire, which relate to neuromotor development and perceptual issues, and we suggest that auditory deprivation might delay the acquisition of fine motor skills.